


Relapse

by Spaghettibopp



Series: Doki Doki College AU [1]
Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Is there a general tag for a universe where there is no game or powers, Medication, References to Depression, Relapsing, Self-Harm, That is also very brief but still, The mention of the suicide attempt is very brief but still there, Vomiting, once again just a brief mention but its good to be on the safe side, please stay safe guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25762390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spaghettibopp/pseuds/Spaghettibopp
Summary: Yuri doesn't mean to do it, except she does, and she can't explain why.After at least a year of being clean, she falls back into old habits.(TW for self-harm)
Relationships: Sayori/Yuri (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Series: Doki Doki College AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876660
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Again, trigger warning for self harm and relapse into self-harm!  
> This can be looked at as a sequel to my fic "Purify," but both can be read on their own.
> 
> If you are here for the hurt/comfort part of the story, I recommend waiting until chapter two is out. This first chapter is just angst

She wasn’t even sure why she did it. It wasn’t like- it wasn’t like there was a _reason._ Yuri tried to think of some excuse, or feeling, or trigger that had led to this situation. There had to be an explanation, right? 

And there was, she was _sure_ that there was, but whatever it was had been tucked away in some secured corner of her mind, quarantined there to keep the rest of her brain happy and comfortable.

Except she was neither happy nor comfortable, and she was only getting further from those things the longer she sat in that bathroom, the tiniest sliver of blood dripping down her arm.

It had been- what? One? Two years? Since the last time she- 

Since the last time this happened?

She felt a numb, distant horror lodged in her throat. An echo of an emotion, as though she was only feeling that way for someone else’s sake. She should be disgusted with herself. And yet, somehow, that was far from her mind.

Instead, a familiar darkness started crawling along her brain, tendrils of danger sliding oh so gently and oh so sweetly past the tiny opening in her skin. They pried at a dark door of thought, and opened it just a little more.

It was a dark thought, a bad thought. But with the way the monster from beyond the door called out, anyone would think it was the most beautiful idea.

She knew better. She really, really did. But the monster was beckoning, singing to her the softest lullaby as the door continued to crack open. It tickled her brain with thoughts of blood and purity and thrill, it licked at her heels with memories of pain she had deserved. _Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful,_ it cooed, _if you did it just once more?_

So she raised the knife. A devoted worshipper of her own martyrdom, ready to once again taste a small sample of her future demise. She was about to slide it across when-

**Suddenly,** she was slammed with a burst of feelings, of emotion and memories and pain still too raw three years later. Of Sayori and the way she cried when she found out, and how, despite the way it absolutely broke her heart, it was a very _necessary_ thing for Yuri to see. Of the bandages and the scars and the crushing guilt as one by one, all of her friends discovered her secret, and the way they reacted was not even in the disgust she had feared, but somehow worse. They were _worried_ about her, genuinely concerned for her wellbeing. Seeing her in pain had caused them to feel hurt, too. 

She remembered Sayori’s own breakdown, of doors left open and rope burned and sharp objects hidden away. She remembered how cold she felt, despite it being a pleasantly warm afternoon when Sayori told them. _Told them._ Because she had fought her demons all the way to rock bottom.

She was doing better. They both were, weren’t they? Yes, Yuri decided. Yes, they were. They had to be. They had gone to therapy, both of them. They had dealt with their issues and were slowly overcoming them, were they not?

She looked at her arm with new eyes, and the secondhand horror became firsthand nausea as her lunch spilled out into the toilet.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god-

Of the many panicked thoughts cutting into her head, one stood out like a bright red light, a blaring fog horn warning her of something that she could not afford to let happen.

_What if Sayori finds out?_

She had to calm down, she had to _breathe._ Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, echoed by the pulsating pain in her arm. If she never left the bathroom, someone would know, someone would find out, and if they found out, ~~they would take her knives away again~~ they would be upset with her, and she didn’t want that. She could not stand to see the hurt in her friends’ eyes, or listen to the accusatory questions that always, always sliced through her no matter how long it had been.

She breathed in- _They’re going to hate you hateyouhateyouhateyou-_

And breathed out- **Not as long as they don’t find out**

She cleaned herself up, dabbed cold water around the edges of her puffy eyes - since when had she started crying? - and gently washed the wound. Satisfied that the light cut had stopped bleeding, she pulled down her sleeves and worked to erase any indication that something bad had happened.

As she was about to exit the bathroom, a paranoid thought wrapped around her head. What if someone saw it?

Well, really, the cut was so much smaller than any she had made before. Small enough, even, to pass off as accidental. She was a terrible liar, yes, but thankfully, she didn’t even need a proper excuse. She could just shrug and quietly claim that it was an accident. If they didn’t believe her, then she would simply deny their accusations and hide away any evidence that proved they were right. 

After all, it was just a tiny cut, a small thing. What harm could it possibly do?


	2. Chapter 2

She stared at the bottle of pills in her hand, hoping they would magically spell out the answer she needed on them. The fact was, Sayori wasn’t sure if she had taken one that day or not. She should have been keeping a better track, yes, she _knew_ that, but she had already missed so many days that counting the pills _now_ would do nothing.

It wasn’t her fault that they were so easy to forget! She was always busy when her alarm went off, and whenever she tried to remember if she had taken one, her brain would make her think of a time where she _had._ Was that memory of her swallowing her pill from today, yesterday, three weeks ago? No one knew, least of all Sayori!

So she sat the bottle down, figuring that not taking one was better than accidentally taking two. She wasn’t sure what the side effects would be if that happened, but they had to be bad, right? Yeah, definitely, probably bad, so it was better to just skip today.

She heard Yuri come out of the bathroom, and turned just in time to see her girlfriend stiffly settle into her desk chair. 

Yuri faced the computer screen rigidly, her eyes obscured in the angle, and immediately clicked onto what Sayori guessed was an assignment. Her sudden, almost frantic typing filled the void where she felt words should be, and the robotic nature of it all was just a bit … unnerving.

Sayori was no stranger to Yuri needing time and space to herself - for the better part of the day, she’d been a little distant - but this felt different somehow. As though she was purposefully avoiding her. Had Sayori done something wrong? She tried to think of anything that might have changed in the past few hours, but nothing in particular came to mind.

Could it just be school? Calling college “stressful” would have been the understatement of the year. Even Sayori, who was attending a community college, was struggling to get by. Between assignments, going to class, spending time with Yuri and the rest of the Literature Club, and not to even mention the clubs she had joined, she felt overwhelmed to say the least.

Meanwhile, Yuri had ended up going to quite the prestigious university nearby, and she was constantly swamped with work. There was always a paper that needed to be written, a textbook that needed to be studied, an online quiz that needed to be taken.

But while it was not unusual for Yuri to be solely focused on schoolwork, Sayori couldn’t help but feel that something was _wrong._ A gut feeling, a paranoid thumping in her chest. For whatever reason, there was no shaking the idea that something had happened.

In any case, Yuri was sitting at her desk vehemently typing away, so fixated on her work that it seemed like her very life depended on it. Sayori spared her another glance before turning to her own screen. 

She could bring up her questions later, hopefully after Yuri had spent some time getting the more extreme feelings out of her system.

\---

Loud pop music filled the room as Sayori’s desperate alarm for “please make dinner, it’s almost bedtime” went off. She groaned as she clicked off of her notes and promptly faceplanted onto the keyboard.

“Mm, is it that late already?” Yuri’s voice chimed behind her. “I suppose we could order takeout, although it would be the fourth time this week….”

Sayori managed to find the energy to sit back up. She turned to Yuri, studying her body language in hopes of finding a clue for what might have happened earlier. The girl seemed calmer now, at least. Her posture was more relaxed, her shoulders back as she entered their adjoining kitchen. It would be a good time to bring up the issue, now that she didn’t seem so … intense. 

“We could make … spaghetti?” Yuri held up a can of tomato sauce, nose wrinkling in displeasure. Just the mention of food had Sayori’s stomach groaning with hunger. She needed time to plot out the best way to approach the conversation anyway, and who wanted to have such a serious talk on an empty stomach? _So dinner first,_ she decided, getting up to meet Yuri by the cabinets.

“Hmm, what about-” She opened the door and was met, almost unsurprisingly, by a single jar of peanut butter, a can of spray cheese, and a half-empty box of pasta noodles.

“Ah.”

“Indeed.”

“So … spaghetti?”

“Or cheesy peanut butter.” Yuri held up the spray cheese and examined the expiration date. She took a moment too long to decide to chuck it into the trash, and the defeated way in which she did so had Sayori wondering if she had been serious. “Spaghetti it is then.”

At least spaghetti was quick and easy. It wasn’t twenty minutes later that they made their plates, with Yuri’s being considerably smaller, and sat side-by-side at the counter.

They ate in relative silence. Sayori tried to enjoy the moment as much as she could, but the longer it stretched on, the more she couldn’t help noticing that a familiar look had overtaken Yuri’s face. She stared into the empty abyss with unfocused eyes, chewing mindlessly at the tiniest bite of noodles. Just as familiar as the look was the dread it caused, twisting and writhing in Sayori’s stomach.

“Yuri?”

“Hm?” Yuri looked at her, but those eyes, usually alight with emotion she expressed in her own subdued ways, were still dim and unfocused. Distracted.

“Watcha thinking about?” She turned her body fully to Yuri, trying to indicate that she was ready for a long, meaningful conversation. 

But Yuri just shrugged and kept eating.

Unwillingly, Sayori’s eyes darted down to Yuri’s sleeves. A single terrible, horrible thought stabbed into her, followed by the hot burn of shame. How could she think that of her? Yuri wouldn’t. She _wouldn’t._

Still….

No. She had to shake away those doubts. Yuri would tell her if something was wrong, if she had started feeling that way again.

“Sayori?”

She snapped her eyes up to look at Yuri’s.

It felt like the floor fell out beneath her. She shouldn’t have been looking at Sayori like that, not- not unless she had something to _hide,_ and Yuri didn’t hide things from her anymore.

They promised.

And yet the _fear,_ and _guilt_ were still there, burning into Sayori with their implications.

She gently grasped Yuri’s hand in her own, bringing the other to ghost across Yuri’s cheek. Although looking surprised by the sudden intimacy, Yuri leaned into the touch almost automatically.

“I need you to tell me-” Tears bit at Sayori’s eyes, but she rapidly blinked them away. She fought to find the words for this, for asking without really asking.

“Did something happen?” _Did you cut yourself?_

Yuri gasped, yanking herself back as though she had been burned. Her stool wobbled with the force of the motion, though to Sayori, it felt like _she_ was the one standing on shaky ground. 

“N-no! Of course not.” Yuri’s shoulders were practically at her ears, though, and everything in her expression was proudly broadcasting that same shame Sayori had seen earlier. _Don’t push, Sayori. Make her feel comfortable enough to talk about it on her own._

“You can tell me if it did.” She took her unwilling hands and squeezed them. “I’m not going to judge you, I just need to know.” Did she though? Did she really _need_ to know that her girlfriend was-

“Sayori, I assure you that I ha-a-ave no idea what you’re t-talking about.” Her voice wavered, full of tears yet to be shed, and Sayori **knew.**

“Yuri.” She kept her voice firm, but not unkind. She needed Yuri to know she was serious.

Yuri’s bottom lip quivered just the slightest, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists in Sayori’s own.

“I-”

All at once, the dam broke, and Yuri was sobbing into her shoulder.

“Imsorry I m s o rrysosorrysosorrysorrysorryImsorrysayo-”

“Shhh, you’re okay.” She swallowed down her own sobs and focused on running her fingers through Yuri’s hair instead. Her girlfriend didn’t _need_ her to break down right now. 

So she whispered soft, quiet words in Yuri’s ear as she held her, ignoring the way her heart broke at Yuri’s death grip on her shirt.

It felt like hours had gone by when Yuri’s cries finally died down, each muffled sniffle a painful reminder of- of-

She kept up her soothing strokes through Yuri’s hair, holding her through the last of the sobs. 

Then, she whispered so delicately that it barely left her mouth at all,

“May I see it?”

Yuri immediately stiffened at the request, but she did draw back. Keeping her eyes locked on their discarded plates, she slowly, shakily rolled up her sleeve. 

It was not the mess of scattered lines it once was, and Sayori thanked whatever higher beings there were for that, but the bright red mark still stood in stark contrast to the rest of Yuri’s pale skin. It was small, and far from deep, but its mere presence sent an unstoppable shiver down Sayori’s spine.

“I’m s-”

“Shhh.” She brushed away bangs and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Enough of that.”

Questions banged against the inside of her head. _Why why why why why-_ What had changed? Had things _been_ changing, and Sayori was too caught up in her own issues to notice? 

She was going to spiral out of control herself if she didn’t do something, so she took a breath, gave her girlfriend’s hand a gentle squeeze, and looked at Yuri.

“See? It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

It was just a small cut.

But what it stood for spoke volumes.

All of her questions were burning on the tip of her tongue when Yuri practically read her mind and answered them for her.

“I’m- I’m not sure why I-” She winced. “I believe I may have … seen something, or-or maybe read something of this nature, and perhaps that triggered it. I was not even- I was barely thinking when I….”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Her thumb stroked the back of Yuri’s hand in slow, calming circles, trying to keep her from getting worked up again. Once she seemed relatively better, Sayori pressed on. 

“So you’re not sure what specifically it was?” If it was a trigger, it could potentially be avoided in the future. If for some reason it couldn’t, they could find ways to deal with it going forward. Coping skills, distractions, all the good stuff her therapist told her about.

Yuri shook her head though, a helpless look in her teary eyes. 

Sayori carefully wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a hug, much looser and gentler than the one before.

“We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

She felt Yuri nod and shuffle impossibly closer on their unsteady bar stools.

It was going to take time, and work. But Sayori was determined to be there for Yuri when she needed her. They would work it out. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my friend who looked this over! 
> 
> This is actually the first multi-chaptered work I've finished on here. Huh.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, I actually do have chapter two written this time! It is over twice as long though, so it's going to take a bit more time to edit.  
> Also, please don't worry about me, I'm fine. I just had some thoughts I needed to get out, you know?  
> Slightly unrelated, but I may also make the universe Sayori and Yuri are in a sort of series, since I am writing other fics in the same world (where Sayori and Yuri are living together while they are attending college), but I'm not sure about any of that just yet.


End file.
